In the Caribbean the terms indigenous and local knowledge frequently denote different sets of information. This is because the vast majority of people in the Antilles have ancestors who came, frequently involuntarily, from other parts of the world and very few descendants of the population who inhabited the area prior to the European conquest remain.

As a result this paper gives a brief overview of the history of the use of local and indigenous agricultural knowledge from the sixteenth century onwards.

The first European settlers in the Caribbean found that their European crops would not grow in the Caribbean. As a result they adopted local crops and agricultural methods. They did this normally by enslaving the native population and using them to both grow and process the crops. Cassava was the main crop in the southern Antilles, while maize was also important in the Greater Antilles.

Thus when slaves came from the area settled by Europeans they were making use of both indigenous and local knowledge. However, as there were insufficient surviving native Americans in the area, Europeans frequently imported native American slaves from south America. These tended to use the same crops as the the indigenous Amerindians, but may well have grown and processed them differently. The methods of growing cassava and indeed maize vary from using slashed and burnt fields to raised fields or mounds. The choice of method appears to have depended on population density amongst other factors. However, it is probable that slaves used the least labour intensive methods and did not build mounds for their masters’ crops. As a result while early European settlers in the Lesser Antilles made use of a semi-indigenous agricultural knowledge, this may have differed from that previously used there. This was partially due to the European and their Amerindian slaves lacking local knowledge as to local conditions but also possibly to a form of resistance practised by the slaves.

When the plantation system was introduced to the Lesser Antilles at the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth century; use of local and indigenous knowledge was rejected by the planters and their European servants. It is noteworthy that just when they were rejecting the Amerindian system, accounts of it were published. It is almost as though until then they had been ashamed of using the indigenous and local systems and did not want to draw attention to the fact. Accounts were meant to be of how the Caribs who had inhabited the lesser Antilles had grown their crops. However, the accounts were probably based on the practices of native American slaves from south America and not of the few surviving Caribs. Thus it is questionable if the accounts were of fully indigenous or fully local agricultural systems.

The surviving Caribs were practising a form of the local indigenous agricultural system at that time. However, as their populations had been decimated by European diseases and slaving there was no need for them to use labour intensive methods of agriculture. As shifting agriculture is easier to hide than intensively cultivated mounds there were also defensive reasons why they would use such methods. As a result their methods may well have become more like those practised by Amerindian slaves in the area than the methods used by their ancestors. Thus while their methods were indigenous they may not have been local!

During the phase in which African slaves were predominantly exploited for agriculture a new system of local knowledge developed. Slaves were encouraged to produce their own food in garden spots, some of which produce they could sell in Sunday markets. They grew a mixture of indigenous and imported African crops, the skills for the former being derived partially from local and indigenous knowledge and the latter partially from their experiences in Africa. The African based knowledge was imported and was thus neither local nor indigenous but eventually became a form of local agriculture with its own specialist knowledge. Many new crops from all over the tropics were introduced to feed them, some of which none of the inhabitants of the West Indies had met before.

Runaway African slaves also had their own agricultural system. In the Guianas and possibly the Lesser Antilles this was based on an Amerindian system of shifting cultivation and was thus in many ways indigenous, though in the Guianas at least the land holding systems were very different.

After emancipation the local peasant system of agriculture was based upon that used in the slave gardens and thus upon a new form of local knowledge. In order to maintain the production of the sugar plantations in the region labourers were indentured from the Indian sub continent. These brought with them another set of agricultural skills and information. As a result while planters in the Guianas had unsuccessfully attempted to run paddy fields using African slaves they were able to do so using this new labour force. It is interesting to speculate as to whether the failure to operate the system with African slaves had been due to lack of agricultural knowledge or because of slave resistance, (ie playing dumb). After emancipation some Afro-Caribbean communities also ran paddy fields.

In the post-emancipation period the descendants of the native population adopted many of the imported crops but maintained a swidden form of agriculture. Their identity was often based upon their land holdings and agricultural methods. Thus the traditional method of production and consumption of cassava has become a symbol of Caribness in some areas. In other areas it was due to their having lands granted to the Caribs.

In the twentieth century there were many attempts to teach tropical agriculture to the peasantry . This appears to have had little impact in the majority of cases . One of the major problems with agricultural support in the late twentieth century was that it was seen as a quid pro quo for political support. As a result the paddy fields in Guyana became the most mechanised in the world. Similarly agricultural demonstration plots were sited not according to agricultural need, but rather according to ownership of the land .

A village that I studied was inhabited by descendants of Caribs and thus in one sense their agricultural knowledge was both indigenous and local . They made more use of shifting agriculture than many of their neighbours. The crops I was mainly studying in the Lesser Antilles are listed in the figure together with an indication as to whether or not their use was indigenous. As I have also undertaken research on the Caribbean coast of Central America some comparative data from that region is included together with some items on the Greater Antilles and the Guianas. A lack of mention of a region used for comparative purposes does not mean that the crop is not grow there. It only states that the peoples I was studying there did not grow much of it. ______________________________________________________ __________

CROP |     C.15 |                     GROWN BY |                 AGRICULTURAL METHOD |

|            ORIGINS | AMERINDIANS| IMMIGRANTS  |LOCAL| INDIGENOUS | IMPORTED |

Cassava | LA, GU. |  LA, GU, CCA |                     CB |             CB |         GU, LA ,CCA |     (no) |

Maize | CCA, GA |         CCA |                                 CB |             CB |                 CCA |         (yes) |

Arrowroot | LA | |                                                       LA |               LA |                                     | no |

Sugar         | alien |             CB                                 CB |                 CB |                                 | pl CB |

Rice (shifting) | alien |         CCA | | | | |

Rice (paddy ) | alien | |                                                 GU |                GU | |                               pl CB |

Coconuts | alien |             LA, CCA |                             CB |                 CB |                             | pl LA |

Bananas | alien |                LA |                                     CB |                 CB |                    | pl LA,CCA |

KEY

CB = Caribbean Basin CCA = Caribbean Coast of Central America GA = Greater Antilles

GU = Guianas LA = Lesser Antilles; pl = on plantations in .....

( ) = Occasional practice.

It should be noted that most peoples who could used a form of shifting agriculture for less legitimate produce.

I hope that this brief historical sketch of Caribbean agriculture and overview of my research interests has demonstrated the complexities of concepts of local knowledge and indigenous knowledge and the interactions between them. The complexities are such that I must emphasise that the implications of this study are purely local. The Caribbean is one of few areas in which peoples whose ancestors have been in the area for centuries would object to being called indigenous!